And I thought Oregon was bad...

Last night, as has become a weekly tradition, a few of us made the 20 minute march to the closest Safeway to acquire the essentials for another week of city living. I didn't need much at all, but what I did need was crucial: milk and bread.

Upon arriving at the store, I made my way to the bread aisle. I personally like to get the Safeway brand of wheat bread ($0.99 regular, $0.79 w/ Club Card), but as I examined the shelves of bread, the wheat was nowhere to be found. In fact, not only was the wheat bread MIA, but there were only three loaves of white Safeway bread.

Normally, I really prefer wheat, but the cheapest wheat bread available was $2.49 for about half the amount Safeway gives you with their loaf. Being a poor college student and unable to to justify spending that much on so little bread, I snatched up one of the few remaining loaves of white bread and continued my shopping.

I then proceeded to hit the milk section. Guess what? There was almost NO milk left, either! I'm a 2% guy, but there was no way that was happening last night, since they were out of EVERY size of 2%. They were also out of every half-gallon of whole milk, and had only a dozen or so gallons of whole left. There was plenty of skim milk left, but for good reason; if I wanted skim milk, I'd mix the remaining tablespoon of my 2% with a cup of water. And so I settled on one of the five remaining half-gallons of 1%.

Can you venture a guess as to why Safeway was virtually cleaned out of these necessities? If you were thinking of the weather, you'd be correct. It is currently snowing right now, and they predict some freezing rain later this evening. But it's not like the Midwest, where some places are measuring snow by the foot, not by the inch. At its worst, there was only supposed to be two inches of snow today, and then tomorrow the temperature is supposed to hit above freezing for several hours.

I guess I'm puzzled as to how a people group like those who live in the District can freak out so easily over such a trivial amount of snow when they've seen much, much worse in years gone by.

Then again, it was a pleasant reminder of how life is like in Oregon when an inch or two is in the forecast.